A Purrfect Surprise
by Ivy deLeon
Summary: ONESHOT! This was requested by KingdomKeeperSai, and I really hope I do this topic justice! The request was that I write a story where Miles gives Franziska a gift, preferably a pet. We'll see how you all like it! Enjoy!


_**A Purrfect Surprise**_

_Franziska von Karma X Miles Edgeworth_

_**Author's note: Wow! People want me to write oneshots! Aw, I'm honored! Any way, this was requested by KingdomKeeperSai, and I really hope I do this topic justice! The request was that I write a story where Miles gives Franziska a gift, preferably a pet. There's definitely some fluff here...and I personally feel like I took these two out a character a bit...but that's just the ramblings and inner-workings of a perfectionist...aaaaaagh! It's getting to me! Ahem. Sooo...if any one else has a request before I come up with the first chapter of the third installment of the 'Perfection' series, please PM me and let me know! **_

_**I don't own Phoenix Wright or any of its characters...blah, blah, blah.**_

_**AND NOW TO THE STORY! **_

* * *

_February 14  
Bitburg, Germany  
__ 5:39 PM**  
**_

She was hard at work as usual. Sitting erect at her desk, her fingers flying over the keys of her keyboard, the flatscreen monitor facing towards her at an angle. She glanced at it every once in a while, but her eyes mostly stayed glued to the pieces of paper that were scattered all over her desk. So many things to type up...so little time. With the way her office stayed: solemn, quiet, peaceful even...one would never guess that a blizzard was raging behind her. German winters were cold, harsh, and unforgivable...and also lasted normally until about April...maybe March if the inhabitants were lucky. So it was not unusual in the least to have a snowfall of immense proportions as the backdrop to this silent room. She had been back home since...she could not remember. She and Miles had traveled to America to help out Phoenix Wright after his nasty spill on a bridge...and then come back here...where they had been living together in the house they had called their home as children.

_Speaking of Miles..._

Franziska looked at the small clock on her bottom right-hand corner of her computer and frowned deeply. He had been gone for a while now...perhaps if he had been in a car when he left the house, she wouldn't let a small piece of worry fall into her mind. However, the foolish man had left on foot, when the skies had merely been overcast; the lightest color of gray that happens before snowfall. He was only supposed to be gone for a half an hour...he had been picking up food for the week at the local market..But he had been gone for an hour now, and, like any anxious person, her body began to fill with a sense of dread, and her mind began to go through the worst possibilities...until she heard the front door slam loudly.

**_She tried not to look too worried as she practically flew out of her desk chair and down the stairs, composing herself halfway down, and reaching a calm exterior by the time she had descended the stairs, turned the corner, and reached the front door._**

There he was, wearing a long black coat that hung down to mid-thigh, white snowflakes dotting his silvery hair. Snow was caked on the black dress shoes he normally wore, and his face was flushed a gentle color of pink from being out in the bitter cold. Around him were several bags of groceries, and Franziska felt compelled to help him put them away, as his bare hands looked practically numb. She crossed her arms over her chest as she approached him, and couldn't help but allow a part of her heart to melt when he smiled at her.Outwardly, though, her expression remained calm and unaffected.

"Cold out there?" she asked sarcastically, raising an eyebrow.

"Don't you know it." Miles replied with a half smile, as he walked over to the German woman and ran his freezing hands up the back of her neck. She yelped...and then hit him lightly for being such an imbecile.

It was in this moment of time that she happened to notice something wriggling in his coat pocket. She said nothing, but quirked an eyebrow at the man in front of her. A characteristically secretive smile traced its way onto Miles' face at her expression. "Oh yes, and I got you a little something while I was out." he stated, motioning for her to take out what was in his pocket. Franziska grimaced. She had a feeling this was coming. He had threatened it once or twice...and she had forced him to sleep on the couch for even **mentioning **the idea. Franziska von Karma was **not** a pet person. Never in her life had she owned one, never in her life had she **desired** to own one. Too much shedding, too much cleaning, too much money spent on food, too much time training it, too much-

"OW! That little thing **BIT** ME!"

Too much money was going to be spent on getting that cat's teeth removed!

While she had been thinking about dreading this animal, she had reached into Miles' pocket, and the tiny kitten, afraid of being cornered in such an already dark space, did the only thing it knew how to do: bite the hand that was "attacking" it. Miles gave the blue-haired woman an apologetic look, but the damage had already been done. Unmistakably peeved, she stormed out of the foyer to the upstairs bathroom to wash out her inflicted wound. As the door closed with a deafening slam, Miles winced and then gently pulled the kitten out of his pocket. With inquisitive eyes, the tabby cat looked innocently at the prosecutor, who sighed.

"You've got a bit of a temper, don't you?" he questioned the cat who simply mewed in response. Miles sighed once again and walked into the living room with the cat. He set it down on the furniture, where it paced in a circle for a moment and then lay on the middle sofa cushion. "Get comfortable...Franziska's kicking **both** of us down here tonight." the prosecutor muttered to his dismay. He knew after this fiasco, she wasn't going to want to even so much as speak to him, let alone look at him. The prosecutor mentally cursed himself. He knew Franziska was rather adamant about certain issues, but normally they were silly things...like how she insisted on having the right side of the bed, closest to the wall...or how she always forced herself to get up at the crack of dawn...even when she had no work to do. He knew her biggest fear was change...the changing of **anything** in her life. And a pet...yes, it did make an impact on life, when you looked at it for a moment. But Miles assumed this dislike of pets was simply her way of stating that the idea was new, foreign, and had been unwelcomed when she was a child, and she didn't want to change any thing now.

_So he went out and got her a kitten. _

She had been stressed lately...over-worked with case upon case. While Miles had requested a winter vacation, she continued to work right on through Christmas, and up until now. Pets were good stress relievers...and that's exactly what he figured she needed. It would be an even bigger surprise, he thought, if he gave it to her on Valentine's Day.

But she treated this day like any other day...

He could hear her making a ruckus upstairs, and he knew what was coming next...he stood in the doorway to the living room and held out his hands as several blankets were thrown his way by Franziska as she blurred past him, picking up the bags of groceries as she did so. Miles groaned and looked at the blankets in his hands...it was going to be a **long, _cold_** night.

After he threw the blankets down in an arm chair, he placed his hand in his pocket, his fingers curling around the other thing he had planned for this night...but he knew it was effectively ruined. Heaving a sigh, Miles took the item out and looked at it for a moment before turning back to the cat. "Well, while I don't have a name for you or a way to keep track of you yet...this will be a temporary collar. Maybe once she gets to liking you, we'll get you another one." he commented, placing the item, a red collar with a white heart in the front of it, on the cat, who attempted to get it off of her with no luck.

_February 14  
Bitburg, Germany  
10:45 PM_

She had to admit it.

It was cold.

She was miserable without the warmth of Miles' body against hers, and the way his arm draped over her midsection in a protective embrace. Throwing the covers off of her, and throwing a robe on, Franziska von Karma made up her mind. She would give up and give in, and let Miles come back upstairs...only if he promised to take that infernal animal back where he found it! This was her house, according to the deed and her father's will, and so help her, she was **not** about to let some tiny kitten, no bigger than both of her hands put together, decide to rule the roost!

She found them...and she froze in her tracks. No. She attempted as hard as she could to keep herself from laughing hard at the scene before her. But she couldn't help the smile that crept onto her face. Miles was sprawled out on the loveseat, which was far too small for him...there were several scratch marks on his face and his legs were dangling off of the end of it. On the large couch, lay the tiny kitten, curled up in a ball and contentedly purring, in the middle of the cushion.

She couldn't believe this. That cat had some courage. Miles Edgeworth, the demon prosecutor, beaten down by a mangy furball...it was times like these that the German woman wished she had a camera. A small...ever so _slight_ chuckle escaped her lips, and while she quickly clapped her hand over her mouth when it escaped, it was enough to wake the restless prosecutor.

How long she had been standing there, he wasn't about to ask...but by the laughter he had heard...which was rare in the first place, he supposed it had been long enough for her to notice the miniature civil war that had taken place between him and the cat. Miles gingerly touched his face as he sat up slowly, wincing slightly. And then, he felt a hand over his, and was surprised to see a gentle look on Franziska's face...quite frankly, he was surprised to see her downstairs at all.

"How badly did it scratch you?"

Miles took a minute for the question to register in his head before he responded. "It's...it's just a flesh wound I think. I don't think she drew any blood..." he replied with a sigh. "Did you need something?"

"...I...I...I want..." Franziska frowned at her inability to stated her phrase clearly and cleared her throat before trying again. This time though, she formed it in more of a question than a demand. "...can you come back upstairs?"

It almost sounded..._pleading_.

"W-what?" Miles asked, blinking several times to make sure he wasn't dreaming. He would have pinched himself, but that cat had caused him enough pain as it was...and he figured that if he could feel it, he **must** be awake.

"...I'm not going to repeat it." Franziska mumbled, crossing her arms and looking the other way, a slight blush forming on her face. "You heard me the first time."

Well.

He certainly wasn't going to press his luck any further!

If she asked him to come back upstairs, then he didn't mind leaving the cat in the least!

_...the cat..._

Miles turned to look at the kitten and then took hold of Franziska's hand, as she dropped her arms and turned to move away. Her genuinely surprised look faded as Miles gently pulled her down onto the loveseat with him, and it turned to a look of confusion.

"Franziska. Let's talk about that cat." he murmured, after taking a deep breath. While he had summoned up all of his courage to talk to her about this, since she obviously despised the animal, he still felt a little nervous about doing so. Naturally he was surprised when she relaxed and let herself sink slightly into the small couch built for two.

"What about her?" Franziska questioned, tossing her hair behind her.

"How did you-"

"You said _she_ when you were talking about receiving those scratches." the German woman explained quickly, bringing a small smile of disbelief to Miles' lips. Even off duty, she was still sharp as a tack.

"...do you...want the cat? I know you weren't so thrilled this evening...but I thought...since you have been under so much stress lately...and a pet is **always** good for companionship-"

"I have you..."

Miles frowned as Franziska trailed off in her sentence that she had interrupted his with. And then it hit him. He knew what she had been trying to say, and her reaction made sense...

"_...I have you, don't I?"_

Of **course**. She was scared of change...but of the wrong kind of change. While the two of them had been thinking along the same lines, Franziska's thought process had deviated from pets being good companions, to the thought that he was giving her the pet to replace him...that he was leaving.

Stupid

_Stupid_

_**Stupid!**_

He felt like he should have hit his head against a brick wall.While things now made much more sense, **now** he had to calm Franziska of her fears without letting her know that he had been able to decipher the code to the walls that encircled her heart. He placed an arm around her shoulder and gently brought her closer to him, so that her head rested against his shoulder. His lips touched her forehead in a reassuring manner. The less words he used, the less his own grave he dug. When she didn't move from his half embrace, Miles took it as a sign that he had resolved the issue.

"Reizbar." Franziska commented suddenly with a chuckle.

Miles looked at the German woman with confused eyes, until his mind translated the meaning of the word...and then a crooked smile made its way across his lips. Reizbar in German meant feisty, or feisty one. It was rather appropriate for the cat...and perhaps even for the woman who named it.

"I like it." he mused thoughtfully. "It's very...fitting."

_February 14  
Bitburg, Germany  
11:55 PM_

They were still on the couch...she had fallen asleep, and he was content in watching her. His surprise had not gone as he had planned it, but he would fix that in the days to come. Perhaps it wouldn't be as **completely** special, but it would still be a shock in the least sense of the word.

All Miles Edgeworth knew, was that when he bought a new collar for the kitten, and when he would ask Franziska to take off the old one...he would cherish the moment forever when she realized there was something **in** that white heart...and he would engrave the look on her face in his memory...when she'd pull out the ring inside.


End file.
